WordPress Widgets; What Are They and How Are They Used

Widgets are blocks of information and functionality which you can add to your site. Everyone can have different widgets based on the theme and plugins they have installed.

Majority of the time, widgets show up as content in the sidebar and/or footer; however, some themes also use widgets to display information on your home page and even in the header.

Widgets are accessible on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. For more on the difference between the two, see our recent .com vs. .org post.

Commonly used WordPress widgets include:

Site Search

Recent Post

Recent Comments

Twitter Feed

Facebook Feed

Author Bio

Archives

Tag Cloud

Category List

Custom HTML or Text

You access widgets via the widgets area found in the appearance section of the WordPress dashboard. There is a list of options in the center, and these are meant to ‘drag and drop’ into the area where you wish them to appear on the right.